WoW – More fun together!

(Don’t) Heal the Tanks

I’ve always had control freak tendencies. Sometimes they come in handy, like when I was applying to grad school. Or organizing a bookstore run with my younger siblings. All six of them. No surprise it would spill over to WoW; the biggest surprise is how long it took me to roll a healer.

As a Resto druid, my inner control freak is very very happy in 10 man raids. I feel like I’m responsible for keeping everyone alive and I like it. Even if I’m supposed to be raid healing I can keep an eye on the tanks for a good time to drop a Swiftmend or my Nature’s Swiftness + Healing Touch macro.

25 mans are another beast. “Ok Analogue you keep Rejuvs on groups 3-5”. There’s my healing assignment. Drop a WG on the melee if I can spare the GCD. Otherwise, Rejuv, wait for the order to battle res. Drop a hot on the tanks. Don’t even think about Nourish, unless the fight goes to heck and the healers start dropping.

It’s fun, don’t get me wrong. I see more of the fights in 25 man. I’m glad I did Rotface in 25 first; I have a really good idea of what to do in 10 man now. But I’m not in control. How could I be, as one of 25, one of 7 healers? It’s as bad as being DPS. In 10 man, I’m one of two, maybe three, performing my role. I can challenge myself a lot more. Should I Swiftmend the tank or heal up that mage over there that took a few ticks of fire damage before moving? Do I need to focus heal the Mark target? Doing my own thing and actually thinking for myself is an asset. In 25 man, I’m part of a team, greater as a whole than as a part. We can do some awesome things together – but deep down inside I feel insecure.

Do other healers feel this way? I bet it’s more of a Resto druid thing than, say, a Holy Pally thing. I think we probably are more likely to feel like we have to heal everyone at the same time rather than focusing on assignments, but I might be wrong.

And how, when the tank’s health bar keeps going down, can I NOT heal him?

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4 Responses

I’m totally with you on this one. I’m probably the biggest offender of the Snipe Heal and can’t help myself from doing it. If I see someone not on my assigned list continueously dropping in health and my grid isn’t showing those lovely green heal numbers on his/her frame, well, they are getting a heal and by golly maybe even one of my cool downs and certainly a NOURISH! I like full bars and if bars are not full I can’t help myself from spreading the rejuv love.

I think it boils down to a trust issue for me. Now, I don’t get to raid with a designated guild. My guild is a small social guild who does not raid on our own, but a few of us do pug into other raids. With pugging raids you can’t always be sure who is going to be your healing partner(s) and unless it happens to be someone I know, yah, I’m going to snipe heal more often than not. Like I said, I wants those bars full NOW! When you can trust your fellow healer than it isn’t such an issue since you can rely on their reactions to the situtation and don’t have as many “OMG AM I THE ONLY ONE HEALING? WHY ARE THE BARS GETTING LOWER!?” moments.

It’s definitely a trust issue, no question about it. I’m on the fringe of a major raiding guild; I don’t go on regular runs, just sometimes alt or pug runs, and so I don’t properly trust the other healers. It’s even worse because Reversion is usually tanking and I’ll see him taking damage or he’ll say something about it and I drop everything and heal him.

I suffer from the Tree Syndrome I think. My usual assignment is heal the raid and throw HoTs on the tanks, which means I basically try to heal anyone who’s taking damage. This works out fine usually… until certain things happen. For example…

a. Saurfang’s marks. Healer X says they’re healing marked player Y. I say I’m healing marked player Z. But Y is getting hit hard and not getting heals shit shit I know I’ll save the day!! I heal Y, he’s alive! But I forgot to heal Z, he dies and we wipe. Hmmmm. Day not saved.

b. I’m healing on my pally. I’m a noob, I admit, but a noob with ADD is even worse. On my pally I heal the tanks. It’s an alt run, we never have enough healers, we never ever have enough paladins. So I’m healing the tanks, but it’s boring and I’m used to blanketing people in green swirlies… so I start throwing FoLs here and there to help out, then I come back to my tanks. There, I discover that they’re taking loads of damage, I remember that my pally’s haste is depressing, and I watch them slowly die while my HL is crawling to the end of the cast.

It’s also an issue of trust, even though I don’t know why, since our healers are pretty good at their jobs. I just like the damn green bars to be full >.<

I prefer healing in 25s, although I like both. I think it depends on you raid group and leadership. My guild almost never uses healing assignments, so I’m able to do what I want, which usually involves healing everyone. But I agree that if my assignment were to rejuv groups 3-5, I would be very unhappy healing 25s. Not that I’d pay a whole lot of attention to an assignment like that. I really find that the generic RejuvX5, WG, repeat rotation is terribly boring and not always the best way to go about healing.